The night before my departure from Nashville I went to a karaoke bar with Mark and some of his friends.  Looking like a total star, as I usually do, I graced the room being continually approached by onlookers who asked, “are you going to sing?”  No one could wait.  When I was finally called up to sing, I was drunk and bombed like hell.  The song wasn’t even in my range if I could sing.  Everyone told me I did fine, but I can assure you, it was sympathy.  I was excited as all hell though, and tried to sign up again but it was too late.  I thought, I knew what I’d done wrong and could fix it all up.  Anyway, I just wanted to sing for a crowd without nerves, and I did that.  I couldn’t have given two shits, really, what it sounded like.  I’d done what I’d sought to do.  When we got back to the apartment that night I wrote and put music to my first song “Closed my Line.”  It was about coming home to the one I loved and it only took about twenty minutes to put together, completely.  Easiest thing I’d ever done.  I knew I could write songs too.

     I got home and went to Mindy’s apartment first thing.   She lived in the same small town as me now and when arriving home from any sort of long separation, we’d live in perfect unity and love for at least a couple of days before “goal-oriented fever” would set in.  At least that’s how I put it.  Actually I was still, just being so damn determined to make some sort of amazing example for the world to emulate, that I ignored the one closest to my heart.  I wrote twenty-five songs over the next thirty days and had them ready to be performed.  I found that to be something at which I am a natural- performing.  Most everyone I’d seen sing would close their eyes and go into their own world.  I make up stories and then tell them to my audience.  They might not sound good, but I’m thinking entertainment, and entertainment is really about communicating, and communicating is mostly visual.  All along I was thinking, hey, if I got cool stories, and look cool telling them, people will like them.  I guessed radio would be a problem I’d deal with later.

     So I went out and bought a sound system to perform with.  I made sure it was grand enough to perform at a major sports coliseum so that I wouldn’t have to come back and go through the shopping procedure again.  I booked myself in every bar surrounding my hometown that would let me in.  It was easy!  Every club I visited said, “we’d love to have you.”  They assigned me a date and I showed up.  Sporadically family and friends came to see me, and Mindy came every time.  Then the problem occurred.  I showed up and I sucked.  I performed at the “Wooden Horse,” “De Je Vu Lounge,” “Little Ditty’s,” “Back Door,” “Back Porch,” and “Bombay Bicycle Club,” once! At most of them I only got in one set before being asked to get out.  The manager at the “Bombay” was really nice; the rest were like pissed off at me.  I did get much better though through the process.  I learned by going straight into battle how to fight, and, that again, was my objective.

     I took my hard earned experience and flew to Venice Beach on December 23, 1998.  I had made arrangements with a friend, Charles Worthington, to stay at his place in Hollywood.  He took me to and from the airport and gave me rides to Venice Beach each day.  He was the photographer who shot me in Playgirl Magazine, on a previous California trip.  I wanted to get to Venice Beach because I knew I could perform for an audience each day without being told to leave, and I knew that I could experiment and determine what I could do to make people pay attention and like me for God sakes.  I performed on December 24, 1998 for over six hours in jeans, boots, hat, and loosely fitting flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off.  I made one dollar and two cents.  The dollar was thrown in by an elderly lady who clearly felt sorry for me, and the two cents was thrown at me.  When Charles picked me up after day one, he realized that I was a beaten man and told me not to give up.  He suggested that I try something different like “hell, Robert, play in your underwear,” laughing, “that’ll make em’ stop.”

     The next morning I took the bus to the Boardwalk.  Charles said he would be down to get me by five, which would give me a total of about eight hours.  I first went to the “pit” to work out, you know, “Muscle Beach,” then I went to perform.  Charles had said when I left that he would bring his camera down and get some shots of me playing.  Much to his surprise when he got there I had a guitar case full of dollar bills as I sang, danced and banged out tunes on the guitar in my cowboy boots, hat and underwear.  He laughed and smiled like a satisfied old wise man and took a series of photos, as did hundreds of on-lookers.  This had been going on for several hours.  I got on the news and was a big hit.  Charles was so pleased.  I remember being driven back to his home, exhausted. He said, “Robert, you have passion, and that’s all it takes to be a singer.”  He then laughed again and said, “my little naked cowboy".  See, I knew I could sing. 

Chapter 3

     Two months of straight closes at Fridays as a waiter is enough to put anybody under.  Thankfully I’m not just anybody and it doesn’t bother me a bit.  I’d been practicing like a madman each day singing, and as a foundation for living, I work as hard at the gym every day, period!  I knew I wanted to return to Nashville to give it another go with a better prepared version of what I’d only taken as a spectator on my last trip out.  Mindy and I were living in love when I returned from Nashville only a couple of months earlier, but that came to an end as I broke from my nightly habit of ending up at her doorstep.  I really wanted to go there because it felt so much like home, but I just didn’t practice six hours a day, get a good workout and work ten hours at the restaurant when I did that.  She didn’t have a problem with me working so hard, I think I just felt guilty because I wasn’t giving her the attention she deserved.  My foolishness created a pattern where we’d go out for two weeks, then separate, without words most of the time, for two, sometimes more, weeks.  I would pretend to myself that our four year plus relationship wasn’t that important when in fact it was the only source of connection I’ve ever really had to a fulfilled existence.  The excuse I would use was that I had higher obligations to humanity, which I humbly admit that I do, but she I somehow consistently forgot was my favorite human.

     March 1, 1998 came along and I was back on my way to Nashville.  I remember driving down the interstate singing at the top of my lungs.  I had made tapes of my twenty-five songs and played them the whole way.  I believed as I do and always will that a star was on his way to make it big, real big.

     I checked into Fridays again and then a motel outside of town.  My friend Mark, who’d I’d stayed with last time out, had moved, making it too wacky to stay at his place.  I developed a routine from the day I got there and spent nine doing it.  I worked at the restaurant each morning, then went to the Centennial Sports Complex to work out, checked the paper listing I’d found for “singer/songwriter night,” then camped out and waited for my turn to sing.  Everything I had was in my car and at days end I’d check into a motel , practice, jog, go to bed and do it again the following day.  Waiting to sing was a long process that quickly became obviously ineffective.  These “singer/songwriter night’s” hosted by a different bar or club each night gave nobodies a chance to be somebody among nobodies.  You’d show up, put your name on a list and wait till you were called.  I went to nine of them and saw damn near the same crowd of people each night.  The audience and the performers were the same people for the most part and the people who’d been doing it the longest, played first and left when they had had enough.  I went dead last each night and played for the host and the bartender, maybe two or three others who decided to get drunk and couldn’t leave.  I did play the Bluebird, and that is a nice place.  I had an audience of maybe close to one hundred.  It was the last place I’d played.  I had gone there a week earlier and got my name on the list when they told me that they were full that particular night.  I felt that I was well received but again, even at a more upscale, serious place, I don’t think the crowd consisted of anybody important.  It was more than clear to me that the way to become noticed in Nashville wasn’t by singing in these holes.  In fact, I remember saying to myself that I had as good a chance in Cincinnati, singing in my closet in my apartment.  There, at least, I wouldn’t seem desperate, or misguided.  Well, maybe misguided.

     Back in Cincinnati, I got back to the drawing board.  I wrote songs twenty-five through fifty, worked out harder than ever, which of course, is what drives one’s ability to operate at full capacity.  I’d been promoted to the bar at Fridays and was causing quite a stir there.  The bar manager was also my training partner at the gym from time to time and so he got to know me as I was and not just as I was performing at work.  I work hard at Fridays, but, I do things as unstructured as imaginable.  I never really learned the corporate routines that drive the usual promotional itinerary.  Management, outside of my friend, wanted a permanent, more conforming worker who would serve to keep the bar staff looking like management hopefuls.  I just wasn’t the general manager’s suggested appointment and so my days were numbered regardless of the job I did.  I did however still seek to prove to be a great worker and sought not to disrupt a steady stream of attendance before taking off on any far reaching, speculative ventures in distant lands. 

     Mindy and I were on again, off again, in terms of our living arrangements and the time we spent together during this period, however, off again was only a physical separation.  I could never let Mindy out my heart despite any claim to be self-sufficient and self managed for long.

     On May 5, 1998 I got an idea.  Hey, doesn’t the David Letterman Show tape out on the streets in New York sometimes?  I wanted to get on the show and the “underwear thing” was on my mind.  I wasn’t working the next two days and so I took a Greyhound to New York City late that evening. I arrived the following morning.  I bummed around til 2:00 P.M., and then went over to the Ed Sullivan studio.  I waited until the crowd gathered outside and then got into my outfit.  I had two or three pictures taken and then security for the studio came to me and said, “what the hell are you doing?”  I told them I was there for the Letterman show as was signified by the word “Letterman,” airbrushed on my butt.  I was then told to “get my pants on and leave the area.”  I went down to Times Square and did the same thing.  It was at that time that Times Square security came to me and told me to “put on my pants and exit the area.”  I went back to Port Authority and took another Greyhound home to Cincinnati.  Round trip, forty-six hours.

     John Robert Burck came about on May 11, 1998.  It was our first day in the T-Bam studio.  My brother Kenny, and friends Rick Rieman, Kurt Meulenhard and Carl Shivener worked for eleven days putting down the tracks and mixing our first C.D. which was called the “Small Town Crusader.”  Mindy shot the cover in front of the Greenhills Branch Library giving it that small town look.  We were so in love again, as was always the case when I took the time to realize it.  The band and I had been practicing for some time in my brother’s basement and I think we were all excited about making a C.D.  We recorded in Todd Buck's basement and probably prepared the best C.D. ever in light of the fact that we’d only practiced for a period of weeks.  We also put it all down, the music, in about four hours.  Several hours were spent mixing the tracks in addition to this, but I’m confident in saying that no artist ever seriously intended to make a finished product C.D. in four hours.  I had one thousand c.d.’s pressed and began giving them to everyone who asked-even selling a couple.  My brother Kenny sold about fifty, which I thought, was incredible.  My due date to become the “most celebrated entertainer of all time” had lapsed by one day before receiving the one thousand c.d.’s.  I quickly made another challenge.  I would become the “most celebrated entertainer of all time” in a year or less.  That gave me another year, but now, the idea of it seemed far less ridiculous.  It’s not about failing if I don’t make it.  It’s about setting a goal grand enough to ensure the maximum drive and effort to get me flying, fast, in the direction I was committed to going.

     I sent the C.D. with photos and cover letters to every entertainment attorney, independent record label and major record label listed in the “Recording Industry Source Book.”  I was following a strategy I put together from reading a number of books; “Everything You Need to Know to Make it in the Music Business,” “Nashville’s UN-written Rules,” and “This Business of Music,” none of which I  know the authors cause I threw the bastards out when I never heard anything from anybody.  I took that to mean that the books were ineffective.  Kind of like the time I went to my little brother’s house and the scale was in a thousand some odd pieces on the floor.  He’d been trying to gain weight and claimed the “damn thing wasn’t giving him the results he was looking for.”  This sort of rationale, I can assure you, works like a charm.  I’ve broken several scales, even ones in fine facilities, and I swear I have put on some damn good weight over the years.

     My next plan was much like the first without the need for anybody’s assistance.  It was to get material, which I certainly had, but still to get more.  For me this means simply, to create songs, and then to communicate them with awesome precision.  Get noticed.  I figured, hell, if I can’t find someone with the capacity to get me famous over night, I’ll get famous over night by my own damn self.  All I need is a vehicle.  It was with this mind-set that I began contemplating what had been effective in the past and what would more than likely work now

Chapter 4

Opening the Floodgates

It was September 17, 1998 when I left again for Hollywood.  I had the opportunity to shoot for a number of magazines through my photographer friend Charles.  It wasn’t only an opportunity to shoot, but the opportunity to get to California with a purpose.  When on a “get famous with shoe-string resources” plan, it is always best not to leave unless you’ve got at least one sure thing going.  While traveling through California, this time, I got several things accomplished.  To begin, I shot for four magazines, though I don’t know which ones they were and I’ve never seen a photo as of yet.  I got paid several months later which is how I know they were published.  Models rarely get paid before publication.  All photography was as usual, nude, but clean, and of course, solo.  I also did a video which I believe was called the “Wild World of Naked Sports.”  It was an experience to say the least.  Twelve grown heterosexual men, possibly one gay, shooting baskets, kicking soccerballs, and running for miles at Dry Gulf Ranch in Camarillo, California.  It was as hot as holy shit outside. The sun was blasting.  Every last one of us had blood-shot eyes from the sunscreen and sweat dripping off our foreheads over countless takes of ridiculously cheesy directing.  It was only money I was working for, but, I learned a great deal just by being present for an experience I’d not have had otherwise.  It was twelve hours of work, two days straight.  I met close to twenty people and have made meaningful contacts that I now have the opportunity to converse with, and encourage, monthly.  I’m sure  all of the guys were there for money as well as they sought ,and still probably continue to seek to make some sort of lasting career in the entertainment business.

     More importantly, this trip to California began to create for me a more identified association between myself and the persona I’d only touched upon as of yet, the Naked Cowboy.  While at Charles’ place, in Hollywood, I went to the Boardwalk again, two days straight, before leaving.  I performed as the Naked Cowboy both times and made considerable money, under the circumstances, and got hundreds of photos taken.  I was recognized and approached by many that knew me from the one time I’d done this before, a while back.  I made the decision then and there, that if nothing was going gang-busters with “John Robert Burck” by the years end having sent hundreds of press packets and CDs out, I’d be the Naked Cowboy in “99!”

     The universal laws, being as they are, began to create a number of great opportunities for the Naked Cowboy.  I declared, conceptualized, and so the cards began to fall.  I placed an ad in Everybody’s News in Cincinnati.  It read, “John Robert Burck” appears as the Naked Cowboy, wearing hat, boots, guitar and underwear.”  The date was October 23. 1998.  The purpose, to state my intentions in publication.  I began to play out with the band as the Naked Cowboy, but only briefly as I quickly recognized that being in underwear took all of the focus off of the music.  This made the performances, I feel, not entertaining, but confusing.  I also quickly realized that the amount of people who seemed to be talking about the Naked Cowboy was incredible.  I sent videos out to the national daytime talk shows and got on the Jenny Jones Show in Chicago, first on November 13, 1998, then on December 6, 1998.  I got then, an appearance on the Gong Show in California on December 14, 1998.  I was received as a sort of “funny goober,” but I was received.  I got national exposure, which, according to the patent office in Washington, allowed me to use the “Naked Cowboy” in commerce in all fifty states and abroad.  That trademarked my new persona.  Throughout this period, Jim Knippenburg, with the Cincinnati Enquirer, wrote several articles about me as I updated him.  I went to each and every local radio station, in underwear, and got on the air singing and talking about my formulating ideas.  I played in front of the Hustler store in Cincinnati in the December snow and got on two local news channels as well as the Trisha Macky Morning Show.  It was while being interviewed by her that I came to the realization, “hey, I could do appearances like the one in front of Hustler anywhere in the country, even the world.” My second C.D., titled, the “Naked Cowboy” was nearing completion and so I began to formulate a strategy for getting around the country and maximizing publicity/attention.

     Home-life for me was very serious throughout the end of the year.  I was working at Fridays for ten-hour shifts most nights.  I competed in a natural bodybuilding show, the Natural Midwest States, to fine-tune my physique, and I was practicing and writing songs like a madman to improve my entertaining abilities.  I spent very little time with Mindy or my family with the belief that I just had to honor my duty of making my dreams a reality.  I would set the example without regard for personal conveniences or comfort.  Sheepishly I ignored the fact that these were the most important elements for making me a man capable of achieving the outcome I am destined to fulfill.  No, “it was work or pleasure and I choose work.”  I was held up and supported by the size of my goals, the pace at which I was moving towards them, and the constant and consistent recognition and encouragement I received from everyone who filled my presence.  Point blank, if you work like a warrior, your results will be huge and everyone will honor your progress and stamina.  Everyone will be encouraged, and you will make men proud by your level of God-given responsibility to create original acts.  Any application of circumstances that does not facilitate such a scenario is foolish and mis-applied.  However, if you forget to care about the ones who clearly love and support you the most, are you really honoring such a creed?  

Chapter 5

The Tour

     I had made up my mind.  I will leave today and get famous.  It was Tuesday, January 5, 1999.  I wanted to get to California and back with as many places as I could in between.  I had an 8.5x11 map of the United States and a pretty good sketched out map of the cities I thought I wanted to hit.  I drove to Nashville, went into the Blue Grass Inn, called the news and then went outside in front to play guitar in the freezing cold for roughly forty minutes.  Many people came out of the neighboring shops but then went back in because of the cold.  I then went to Fridays on Eliston Place, where I knew people from my previous trips to Nashville.  I called the news again and played out front of Fridays.  By the time the general manager came out and told me I had to go, Channels Five and Four interviewed me and so my first city was a success.  I drove to Chatanooga immediately from Nashville and didn’t get there until dinnertime.  It was dark and cold.  I made quick friends with the people in a place called the Electric Submarine.They called the news and I got a full interview, in depth, a free meal and great news coverage.  I stayed at a Days Inn just outside of Atlanta that night and had a great workout in the hotel owner’s personal free-weight exercise room.  I went to bed positive and sure of success.

     On Wednesday I woke up and drove into Atlanta.  I found the city’s main Planet Hollywood and played out front until I was told to leave by the manager.  I then did the same across the street in front of the Hard Rock Café.  I then went on the opposite corner of both that had and empty building in front of it until the police came and put me in the back of their car while checking my license.  I had every corner packed with people as they waited to see what would happen to me.  I was released and told I needed a permit to play.  I got out, went all over town to check outs permits and found that it simply wasn’t a ten-minute routine as the police had told me.  I went back to Hard Rock and started over again, this time simply not playing the guitar but walking around.  The Channel 11-news team came out for which I did play.  I was invited then, inside the Hard Rock Café where I played on a mini-stage while patrons just stared.  The general manager who was unaware of my presence until that point then removed me from the restaurant.  I drove to the outskirts of Jacksonville and got a motel.

     On Thursday, I hit Jacksonville and got a fabulous response, the best yet.  I was in the middle of the city and the office buildings poured out with people who watched and took photos.  Channel 3 covered me and then one policeman out of fifty or so brought the event to a sudden halt.  He was personally offended and acted ridiculous.  My job was complete though and so I cooperated.  People surrounded me at the back of my car where I passed out remaining CDs, signed Fridays’ shirts, and Naked Cowboy Tour Guides.  I then drove and got kicked out of Daytona twice by the same officer. Then got on the news without any problem in Orlando.  Previous trips to Miami allowed me the privilege of free accommodations at a friend’s house near Southbeach where I crashed for the night.

      I drove to the city of Miami on Friday.  It is a huge city.  I hadn't even been aware of it’s existence.  I hit a parking garage and then came out as the Naked Cowboy with no planned place to begin.  I just started walking down the busy streets causing lots of attention as I searched for a place to play.  I quickly had a cop on my back who called the sergeant to decide on my “o.k.” or not.  When the sergeant did arrive, there were, at that point, some twenty officers present and hoards of people.  The sergeant approached me.  I put out my hand and said, “hello, sir, I’m the Naked Cowboy.”  He looked back and said, “no Naked Cowboy in my town.”  I was then escorted to my car and made sure to leave the city.  I then drove three and one half-hours to Key West.  The longest, most boring piece of road I’d ever seen after the first ten minutes.  I played on the main drag on the Keys for four solid hours.  I got no news coverage cause they have no news coverage. But I did get seen by thousands of people who took photos, and the police could have cared less.  I returned to my friend’s house in Miami and slept well as I was tired as all hell from a very long day of boring driving.

     Saturdays and Sundays, I found, weren’t good days for Naked Cowboy tours.  The cities are empty and no one is around to react to anything.  I drove through the entire state of Florida and really couldn’t wait to get out.  It all looked so much the same it began to irritate me.  I worked out hard over the weekend in YMCA’s along the way and brushed up on my tan.  I read like a crazy man and made lots of calls home to give reports as to what was going on.  I continued to live on canned-goods from the back seat as I had been doing since my departure for Cincinnati.  When Sunday night came along I was just outside of Baton Rouge where I slept at a rest stop reading my Anthony Robbins book “Unlimited Power.”

Journal Entry on Sunday, January 10, 1999

1.   How many people can I inspire to achieve their goals by continually focusing and achieving mine?

2.   How great will it be to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only have I carved out the life that I was committed to, but that I also served as a catalyst for others to do the same.  People that I truly love and care deeply about?  How many people will also be inspired by these people and then their people?  The processional effects of following, without hesitation, ones dreams/destiny cannot be underestimated.

3.   Every time the Naked Cowboy succeeds, everyone whom I reach succeeds.

4.   Not only does everyone who sees me on the street get a laugh (positive state change), but countless thousands of viewers of the news.  Everyone who knows my plans and expectations will be elevated by my efforts.  I can truly make a difference each and every day.

5.   People receive money, affluence, success, assets, love and all that life has to offer, in proportion to the service with which they provide for others.  If I continue to focus solely on how much I can give, how much of my God-given abilities can I accentuate?  How much can I unfold myself as the miracle that I am?  If this is what makes life pleasurable to me, what financially could I possibly be worried about?  There is nothing that I won’t give to make my life and what I stand for a manifest reality.  It is a law then that I do have at my disposal; all that life has to offer.   Perhaps it might  seem as though I don’t have “everything” I could ever want, but currently, nothing is stopping me from giving.  That’s what I want.  Life is a process, a journey.  As I go I will find ways to give more, to reach more.  Every resource I could ever use to contribute on an international level is within me.  What a feeling it is to know that the secret of living is giving.

On Monday, January 11, 1999 I drove to Baton Rouge and called Mindy.  I’d been thinking of having her meet me in California, via plane, and spending a week of the tour possibly with me along the coast of California.  She’d never been to California and felt one, that she would love it, and two, that I would love to have her with me.  Kenny Beck, who did my make-up on my previous trip to California, doing the video, would be in Las Vegas working, and sent me the keys to his place in Hollywood.  It was a great opportunity for Mindy and I to escape together in the midst of what was becoming a long, lonely time apart.  While she thought about it, I went into Baton Rouge and got news coverage from Channel 9 and Channel 2 in front of the Downtown News building.  I then drove to Lafayette where I got the news again in front of a furniture store.  There it was Channel 3.  I also got a newspaper interview before being ushered out of town by the police.  I then drove to Beaumont Texas and got on the News, then to Houston where I played for several hours, calling the news without success.  Getting on the news in three cities in one day still felt like failure as I reclined into a hotel room outside of Houston.  Mindy confirmed the trip to California and I vowed to get Houston with a second attempt in the morning.

     The following day I got up real early and went back into Houston.  It was Tuesday, January 12, 1999.  Things went much better this time.  The Houston Chronicle interviewed me; I was covered by Channel 2 and two other channels that I was too busy to even bother with.  People came and watched in large numbers and the police approached and then said I was doing nothing wrong.  It was then that I found that my removal from Lafayette was aired nationally on “Inside Edition” and that they had heard I was coming.  I left Houston for Austin and got the news there, again, Channel 2.  I then drove all the damn way to San Antonio where the police told me to leave the city or go to jail.  I then drove all the way to just outside of El Paso through countless hours of warm desert.  When I got to my hotel room I called Mindy.  We talked with excitement about national coverage and about her coming out to California.  She said that I was her inspiration and at that point I again remembered why I do what I do and how I know I’m the man I say I am.

     On Wednesday I got the news in El Paso, then I drove to the outskirts of Phoenix.  There I worked out for several hours with some guy named Havier who owned the Toltec Inn and had a workout facility in one of the rooms.  I gave him a copy of “Unlimited Development”- a fitness plan that I wrote several years back-because he seemed committed enough to want to look like me.  He said he’d give me free hotel rooms here and there and whatever.  I really needed to hit the weights and just thought it was miraculous that I came across some, wherever the hell I was.

     The Capital Building seemed a good spot to appear in Phoenix.  I got the news and was then ushered over to Dan Diego.  Crowds of store owners opening up told me that street performers were strictly prohibited as I strolled, as the Naked Cowboy, down the streets.  It was nice out and I got on the news.  I told those I passed after my news interview, “sorry about the no street performers thing.” I got to Kenneth Beck’s place in Hollywood that night and slept like a baby after reading "Unlimited Power"for two hours .

     Friday was my last day alone as the Naked Cowboy before Mindy would be with me for a week.  I did Pasadena and got no press.  I did however, get photos taken with the Sergeant, and several officers.  They loved it and told me to come back later at night on the weekend when the place was hopping.  I went back to Hollywood where I covered all of Hollywood Boulevard several times.  The police let me pass when I gave them a “Naked Cowboy Tour Guide.”  He said as he let me go, “I just had to make sure you weren’t a weirdo.”  Wow, what does it take here?  When Mindy arrived that evening, we first went and unpacked her stuff at Ken’s, then we went to Pasadena to storm through some big crowds on Colorado Boulevard.  We were almost killed there by some serious punks.  They followed close behind me screaming “faggot” and shit like that.  We ate and went back to Hollywood.

     The week in California with Mindy was like a little paradise.  We shared every waking moment of it together though we did do some work.  Outside of performing on Venice Beach and getting on the news in Hollywood and Santa Barbara, and getting in the Los Angeles Times, we watched movies, ate, worked-out, everything.  We stayed at the Blue Sands Hotel in Santa Barbara and had a pretend honeymoon together.  We layed on the beaches along the Pacific Coast Highway and shared many loving moments together.  My hit song “Sex on the Beach in Santa Barbara” was written during our time together.  The day I took her back to the airport was a long goodbye.   We did goal-setting exercises at the airport for a couple of hours before I left her there to catch her plane.

     The weekend after Mindy’s departure was spent with Ken.  He went with me to Venice Beach and the Boardwalk while I performed each day.  We ate out together , watched movies and just pretty much bull-shitted about the entertainment business and what he knew of his end.  I got him working out with me in the mornings, something he’d not been doing, and we hit if off like brothers.  It was a productive and enjoyable mix of working and learning about life.

     Monday began the real workweek and so after coffee with Ken, I was off for Las Vegas.  I drove across a real hot strip of sand and arrived around noon.  I wasn’t in Las Vegas for more than fifteen minutes.  I parked in front of the Stardust, called the news, got on the news and lots of photos with “Naked Cowboy” cheering tourists and then was quickly ushered to my car.  “Hey, I’m getting good at this.”

     I drove then back to Mesa Street in El Paso and got the same news coverage I had on the way to California before stopping outside of Houston for a second appearance there.  The following morning I did Houston again with no coverage, but, with swarms of people, who had seen me on the news only a week or so ago, surrounding me.  I gave out two hundred Naked Cowboy C.D.s that had finally been delivered to Ken’s house in California just before leaving.  I should have had this Naked Cowboy C.D. before leaving Cincinnati in the first place, but, I kept getting excuses from the replication group in New York.  People tried to give me money, and some did.  I think I got like ninety dollars which a number of high school girls collected for me by saying “donations?” They came out of nowhere and wanted to help me out.  It was Tuesday.  I had got a call from the Jenny Jones’ Show letting me know that my second appearance would air that day.  “I love national exposure like you just can’t believe.”  I was then thrown out of Texas prior to driving eight hundred and ninety miles.  I  hit another motel and called Mindy before falling asleep exhausted.  I did run however, I’m not a lazy ass.

     The rest of the trip was pretty much rained out.  I went to Little Rock, Arkansas, Memphis and lastly Nashville.  I did however stop back at Fridays on Eliston Place in Nashville to pass out the new CD to some old pals who seemed happy to see me.  I then bolted home.  It was Thursday, January 28, 1999 when I pulled back into Dewitt Street in Cincinnati.  I immediately took a shower, and went to Mindy’s and went to bed.

     The next morning I started thinking about Washington D.C.  I just felt that I should have somehow included it in the tour and was feeling like I came home early.  I wanted to send a package with my C.D. in it to Bill Clinton after hearing a radio evangelist blast on him and his administration on the way home through Little Rock.  I then started thinking of publicity and got this idea to send the C.D. in a suspicious looking package with a note reading, isn’t it time you heard the new Naked Cowboy C.D.?  Luckily I consulted a friend who told me that nobody would think that was funny and that I would spend lots of time behind bars with no coverage.  So I drove to Washington to take Bill a C.D. in person on January 31, 1999.  I quickly found out the following day that you couldn’t just go up to the White House steps as I had thought and so I went for a drive around Washington to find somewhere better.  I made a turn down Connecticut and passed by two hundred or more TV cameras all facing the front door of the Mayflower Hotel.  It was  media madness as every news team across the United States was there to get a shot of Monica Lewinsky coming out of the hotel.  She was there to testify about her relationship with the President.  I couldn’t believe it.  I parked and ran over to the Mac Donalds that was next door, went into the bathroom and changed.  I gave my clothes to the cashier saying, “I might be back for these, I might not.” I then left and walked right in front of the Mayflower’s entrance where I began to dance and sing, “I’m the Naked Cowboy coming to a town near you.” I got  Associated Press across the United States and front pages of newspapers everywhere as well.  I got news coverage worldwide on both local channels and CNN.  My photo on the front page of one paper was held up on “Regis and Kathy Lee” the following morning by which time I was at home in Cincinnati sleeping.  Now I felt that the trip had come to successful end.

Chapter 6

     It wasn’t more than a day after being home that I began feeling like a loser that needed to go out and do something with my life.  Thankfully I had gotten a call from the Rick and Bubba Show in Birmingham Alabama.  That got me out on the road again.  Nashville was on the way so I stopped there.  I got thrown out of town as usual and got on the news again.  I spoke to Mindy when I got to Birmingham, and due to some sort of lover’s quarrel we got into prior to leaving, it hurt even more than usual to be away from her.

     The Rick and Bubba Show went great.  They’d heard of me while I was touring the country.  They also happened to be the judges who gonged me at the Jenny Jones’ talent show.   I was well covered by the media in Birmingham and also in Atlanta on the way home.  I was passing through when I heard that Bill Clinton would be in Atlanta for Hank Aaron’s birthday party.  I staked out the hotel and appeared out front for cameras when I thought Bill’s limousine had arrived.  I got back to Cincinnati and then left immediately for Washington D.C. to play on the Capital Building steps.  Turned out to be no big deal and no one gave a shit.

I began to realize that the best success I’d had since the beginning of all this hoopla came from going where the media already happened to be, so I began to sit back and observe what was going on in the world.  Why go out and continue to make something out of something that had already been covered and done.  Just before this plan happened though, I took a trip to NYC with five friends from Fridays in a limo to try and get on the David Letterman Show again.  No such luck.  Back to my better idea, I began locally and then nationally.  Beginning in my hometown I began to appear at every news covered event I could find.  I did all of the festivals, parades and outdoor parties that occurred from February through May of 1999.   I was banned from Tri-county mall; Cinergy Field, Showcase Cinemas; the University of Cincinnati’s Campus, Newport Acquarium, Ault Park and the Cincinnati Courthouse just to name a few.  I was thrown out of the Indianapolis 500, the Chicago MTV V.J. Contest, and was arrested and jailed for grand marshalling the Kentucky Derby Parade, unexpectedly.  My friend Jim Knippenburg, with the Cincinnati Enquirer, covered a lot of the details following me in the paper, and local and syndicated radio shows accepted me every time I came to their stations which was fairly frequently.  I worked at Fridays part-time throughout the entire period between February and May picking up shifts when I wanted to.  They were very flexible that way for me which is why I continue to work there despite offers to work similar jobs in the local area offering more money for my novelty.  Mindy moved into my apartment at the beginning of May, I think it was the ninth or so, and then her parents pulled up in a U-haul, moving her out on the sixteenth of the same month.  She claimed I was dangerous and that I didn’t want her there.  I only recall working on my career and wondering what the U-haul was doing in the front yard.  The fact that we’d not talked for two days, to me, was not anything out of the usual.  I didn’t think so at the time anyway.  In retrospect I know that I’d become the possessed maniac I often become when I loose sight of the river, jumping rock to rock up stream, with my raft in hand.  I finished my third C.D. titled “Naked Cowboy, again" on the seventeenth and decided that I wanted to do another tour.  This one, I decided had to include Mindy.

Chapter 7

Round Two

       On June 11, 1999 I left home, this time with Mindy, for another trip across the United States.  She had been talking for some time about finding a job with travel and I wanted to give her one.  One without a paycheck, initially.  We went straight to Nashville and I was in a police car with news coverage within fifteen minutes of parking.  I was driven back to my car where Mindy had ended up as well.  Birmingham was our night out at the Quality Inn that was being provided by the Rick and Bubba Show.  I was singing the National Anthem at a Rick and Bubba softball game the following night.  When I got up to sing and they had me stroll down the ball field to home plate where all the players were lined up in two rows with their hands on their hearts, nobody could keep from bursting out in laugher.